Vanishing points

The Vanishing Point filter is more powerful than it's given credit for. Justin Maller shows you how to use this feature so that you can wrap images around multiple 3D planes with the greatest of ease.

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A handy device since it was first launched, the Vanishing Point filter has been revamped and improved for the extended version of Photoshop CS3. Vanishing Point enables you to insert perspective planes into your images. Consequently, any editing you wish to carry out within an image that contains multiple perspective surfaces is dramatically simplified.

After defining a plane, you can continue to work on your composition in Photoshop. The program will carry on altering and scaling your edits to respect the perspectives you have already established, thus heightening realism and reducing workload. When you finish editing an object in Vanishing Point, you can even export it as a .3DS file to edit later in whichever is your preferred 3D program.

New to CS3 is the ability to add multiple surfaces to a perspective plane on any angle; previously, it was only possible to drag new planes out at a 90-degree angle, which wasn't always helpful when you were working with stock imagery. Fortunately, this issue has been rectified, and planes may now be extended and rotated on any angle.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to map out the perspective planes of a CD case, an object with multiple surfaces and angles. You'll then see how we've applied some designer artwork to it. Additionally, you'll make use of the enhanced Measure tool, embedded within CS3 Extended's Vanishing Point filter, to make sure the album artwork you create is of the correct size and dimension, and will wrap seamlessly around your planes.